It's Not About the Burqa Quotes

“I believe the role of the writer is to tell society what it pretends it does not know.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“When a woman is ‘too much’, she is essentially uncontrollable and unashamed. That makes her dangerous.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

“I have engaged in enough women’s rights activism to know that the belief “sons are better than daughters'' is a huge problem in some parts of the world. For those who have little knowledge of Islam, there is the impression that women’s oppression stems from islamic teachings. This is simply not the case. In fact, muslim imams preach about the value of daughters often siting that a daughter opens the gates of paradise for their father. Indeed, the person the most beloved to the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, was his youngest daughter, Fatima. Islamic teachings are clear that a father has to fulfill his duty to raise and care for his daughters, and that the obligations go beyond providing financial support. He must provide a safe, peaceful, and loving home environment that is conducive to his daughter’s overall spiritual and moral development.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“We are not asking for permission any more. We are taking up space. We've listened to a lot of people talking about who Muslim women are without actually hearing Muslim women. So now, we are speaking. And now, it's your turn to listen.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“Mine is a single person's lived experiences. An experience full of contradictions, imperfections and incongruities, but my lived experience nonetheless. Part of the journey, for me, is owning the inconsistencies in myself and my stories- we cannot change past perceptions, but we can certainly reflect on them, own them, and commit to growing from them. We must cultivate compassion for our past selves, trusting that we did the best we could at the time, while simultaneously striving to do better”
― Yassmin Midhat Abdel-Magied, It's Not About the Burqa

“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

“Women are supposed to be ‘less than’, not ‘too much’. Women are meant to be quiet, modest, humble, polite, nice, well behaved, aware of the red lines. They are supposed to tread softly and within their limits.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

“Revolutions 'go too far': if your community is ready for you, then you are too late. You must challenge your community. You must throw down the gauntlet of freedom to your community and dare it to accept. Revolutions are by nature uncomfortable. They are meant to discombobulate.

How else would the status quo be overthrown? Revolutions rattle the privileged and discomfort the complacent. They are never about the comfortable majority. Rather, it is always the minority, especially those who are caught by the intersection of multiple oppressions, who instigate and inspire.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“things were a lot easier when I wasn’t woke. Or perhaps they were easier because I wasn’t woke.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

“You think all your memories are yours alone, but often they are given by others: versions of events repeated by family, scenes stolen from a movie watched half-sleeping, dreams willed into existence.”
― Coco Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“Profanity – especially delivered by women – is a powerful way to transgress the red lines of politeness and niceness that the patriarchy – shared by the rock and the hard place – demands of us as women. I say fuck because I am not supposed to. I say fuck because I believe that the crimes of racism, bigotry and misogyny – enabled and protected by patriarchy – are more profane than swear words. I say fuck because there is nothing civil about racists, Islamophobes and misogynists arguing over my body as if I did not exist.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

“Patriarchy demands that of all women, but the more women fall within intersections of oppression, the more they are expected to live by those demands, and Muslim women are especially vulnerable to what I call a trifecta of oppressions: misogyny (faced by all women), racism (faced by women of colour) and Islamophobia (faced by Muslims).”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

“Dissecting the rishta sites quickly becomes me and Fiz's favorite pastime. 'Look at this one, Fiz, look at this one. "i am looking for simple, obedient girl." Vom!' 'Why doesn't he just advertise for a chief chapati maker and be done with it.' 'I know, right! This guy says "only virgin!", "no party girls!" He also loves exclamation marks.' 'Translation: I can't be with a woman who has met other men because then she'll know how rubbish I am.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“In early Islam in seventh century Arabia, Muslim women were feisty and unafraid to fight for their rights. With the passing of the centuries, their dramatic progress stagnated and stalled, causing them to regress. Women need to reclaim their rightful legacy by educating themselves, as is a duty under Islam.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“Writing is dangerous because we are afraid of what the writing reveals: the fears, the angers, the strengths of a woman under a triple or quadruple oppression. Yet in that very act lies our survival because a woman who writes has power. And a woman with power is feared.1”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

“As they like to say: you can fool yourself but you can’t fool God.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“Once you have begun the journey of awakening, there is no turning back.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“I would accept nothing less than substantive, transformative and unconditional equality, for myself and for others.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“What is the point of being represented if it is only our image that is invited to the table?”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“It was overwhelmingly white men held the keys to the doors that I needed to get through.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“I will forever be the enemy of patriarchy, whichever language it speaks or God it worships.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“Feminism saved my mind.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“Never, ever let people make you feel ashamed for who you are. You know what is right and wrong in your heart, and it is your heart that Allah sees, that I see, and that you have to see every day when you look in the mirror. No one has the right to judge you.”
― Mariam Khan, It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

“You think all your memories are yours alone, but often they are given by others: versions of events repeated by family, scenes stolen from a movie watched half-sleeping, dreams willed into existence. I want to say that everything that follows here are my memories but I’m not sure. I’m not sure whose they are, or if they indeed ever belonged to anyone. In the end I’m not sure it matters. Sometimes all we know of families are the myths we are told and the fragile heaviness we carry inside, the sound of snapping in the ear.”
― Coco Khan, It's Not About the Burqa

“Too often, ‘community’ is synonymous with men, and too often those self-appointed male leaders are the ones who determine what is ‘too far’. In fact, the word and concept ‘community’ is much like the word and concept ‘culture’: for example, a popular way to rein in people – read ‘women’ – is to tell them that they must not oppose a behaviour or way of being because it is part of the ‘culture’ or what the ‘community’ wants.”
― Mona Eltahawy, It's Not About the Burqa